War Rocket Ajax #135: Mike Norton Talks ‘Battle Pug’ And ‘Troll 2′

This week on War Rocket Ajax, Chris and Matt are joined by Mike Norton, the creator of Battle Pug, and the conversation goes off the rails in a way that hasn't happened in quite some time. They talk about why Mike loves pugs, their fascination with Juggalos, and just what it would take to get Steve Ditko to adapt Troll 2 -- and you can listen to the whole show right here on ComicsAlliance!War Rocket Ajax #135: Steve Ditko's Troll 2 with Mike Norton

(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

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In this week's episode, Blazin' 93 and Get Dirty Wilson are up to no good as usual. Chris is grappling with House, the 1977 Japanese horror movie about seven schoolgirls against a witch and her cat, and Matt is writing all the time.

When Mike joins us, he talks about plotting things out as a writer:

I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants in terms of how natural everything feels, and when the idea came to do this, even I was looking at this drawing going "this is just a one-trick pony. I can't do anything with this, this is a guy on a pug. This is gonna get really old after a while."

So I sat down and I thought about what the story was that I wanted to do because I'd never really written anything except for The Curse, which I'd done a year before, and that's what kind of got me to think about doing my own thing again. I said "Well, there's kind of this big epic story here strung together by lots of ridiculousness," and the thing I'm learning is that once you start writing a story and you have all the silly stuff, you get attached to the people and that makes it really easy to do things like tragedy. You've tricked people into actually caring about stuff, and it makes it really easy to turn the corner like that.

It's really fun for me, because I'm not going to make any claims of being a great writer or anything, this is the second thing I've done, but I'm really enjoying that part of it. I can see why you guys like doing it.

Plus: An extended -- and I do mean extended -- conversation about Troll 2.

Show Notes:

Follow Mike Norton on Twitter, and read Battle Pug online! There's a naked lady in it.

Mike Sterling pog blogs at PogressiveRuin.com

Rogues in the House: The story where Conan fights a gorilla that thinks it's a wizard.

Please enjoy a scene from Troll 2.

You can watch House (Hausu) on Hulu!

Chris's Rec: WWE '13

Matt's Rec: JJ Doom - Keys to the Kuffs

Comics Reviewed:

Superman: Earth One, Volume 2: "This is an embarrassment to everyone involved."

Happy #2: "The tone of this comic is like Grant Morrison looked at one of his star charts, and the star chart said 'Mark Millar mixed with Garth Ennis mixed with something weird and crazy,' and this is the book that came out of it. I don't know whether I like this comic or not. That is the weirdest thing about it."

Wolverine and the X-Men #19: "This is another one of those issues that, much like the Doop issue, was a very fast-moving, very dense sort of housekeeping issue for the school. It has Swarm in it. There's a lot of really clever, really funny stuff going on here, and it's absolutely beautiful."